Is There Just One Right Person to Marry?, part II

My two unmarried children are both in dating relationships and have been spending some time thinking about "is she/he the right person to marry?" and "is there only one right person to marry?" I've already thought about this topic in a previous blog entry, but the topic has come to my mind again as I pray for my children and their relationships.

Currently, I'm thinking about this topic in terms of value. If, for instance, you are the only one for me, then I am going to value you greatly, be careful how I treat you, and make sure I don't lose you since you're irreplaceable. If, on the other hand, you are only 1 out of 100 whom I could marry, then your value is considerably less, maybe only 1/100. I can treat you with less care, because, if I lose you, it is only a minor and momentary loss--after all, there are 99 more waiting on my doorstep.

Rice

I have recently been educating myself about rice. We eat rice regularly, but I did not grow up eating rice. In fact, I used to think I hated rice, but that was because I had only every eaten it in this nasty dish as a child. Yuck! I grew up in a meat-and-potatoes culture where rice was nearly unheard of. I was well an adult before I really tasted rice as it was meant to be eaten--without sugar!

Many times my rice turned out sticky and gummy. Then I tried a bag of basmati rice, and it turned out to be a lot easier to cook. It smells different than other rice, and even I can cook it almost to perfection every time. I recently tried another variety, jasmine, but it turned out too sticky again. That made me curious so I did some research and found this nice link to an explanation and photos of a number of different kinds of rice. Turns out the stickiness is more because of the type of rice than because of my cooking abilities.

I guess this blog entry is a bit late; last year was the International Year of Rice.

Daughter #2 Returns

We had quite a surprise today. Our first exchange student daughter, Sandra, showed up in Dallas for a nine day visit. She had made the arrangements with a friend of ours so she could surprise us. We are very excited to have her here. She came at a good time because she will be able to see David when he is home for Thanksgiving next week.

Sandra lived with us during the 99-00 school year when Rachel was a senior, David was a junior, and she was a sophomore. The second exchange student daughter we had live with us, Doro, was here during the 03-04 school year.

Sandra remembers her favorite store, Clothestyme, but I'm not sure they are still in business. Sandra will be with us until November 26, so that will give us some time to try to find it.

Personal Watermelon

I thought watermelons were supposed to be bigger than cantelopes.

Correction

I got a call from a faithful blog reader (I have at least one) today, saying, "Yeah, I know that song--Jesu Azali Awa--that you wrote about in your blog. I listened to it on the way to work today." And I thought no one had even heard of it. Sure enough, a popular Christian singing group called Selah has it out on one of their CD's. Here are all the words. Turns out I also had the language wrong. The language the song is written in is called Lingala, spoken in Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly called the Belgian Congo.

A Grand Adventure

Today was the conclusion of our church's two weeks of missions emphasis. We are fortunate to have a pastor who is both missionary kid and former missionary before he became a pastor. We often enjoy his stories of life in Romania. He mentioned how many people are afraid to answer God's call of "Whom shall I send?" because they are afraid of what they are getting themsleves into. "At one point, I was afraid to ride the train from Germany to Amsterdam. And indeed, the first time we did that, we got on the wrong train. But, we survived. Life is an adventure." He pointed out that we often do things without really knowing what we are getting into--like getting married and having kids, for starters.